OBJECTIVE: To examine in a variety of ways the relationship between possible environmental risk factors and prostatic cancer. Initially, occupational and geographic histories, as ascertained from mortality data, will be compared for men dying of prostatic cancer and controls dying of other non-cancer causes. For this purpose, death certificates for Alameda and San Francisco Counties will be utilized. In addition to traditional methods for calculating relative risk, logistic and log-liner analysis will be employed. Another aspect of this proposal is to study the influence of socioeconomic status on prostatic cancer survival patterns. Incidence data from the California Tumor Registry and indices of SES based on census tract or residence which have been developed in the course of our current study will be used. Several other small projects will be completed, including a comprehensive annotated bibliography of prostatic cancer epidemiology. It is also proposed to develop a detailed protocol for an individual case-control study. A questionnaire will be designed to elicit lifelong occupational, geographic (including migration, rural/urban exposure), and other experiential information for case-control comparisons of a detailed nature on possible environmental risk factors. In order to test for sero-epidemiologic differences and the presence of absence of potentally carcinogenic substances in the study subjects. the feasibility of collecting and analyzing blood and tissue specimens will also be examined.